Life of Ashes
by Hannah Lynn McDonald
Summary: Character study of Adam and his lives through the years - of how he dealt with Henry.


He carefully pulled on the black gloves, staring at the phone lying atop the bureau. It was silent, but it seemed to him to shine – a light of hope and end. But even as he picked it up and slipped it into his coat pocket, it seemed to drag him down. It symbolised hope of an end, but somehow he knew that this was meant to fail – that he would remain alone again come what may. The past had a way of returning at the most inopportune times, and certainly he had enough to drag him down time after time again.

Perhaps he should have met Henry first as Lewis. Hewlett or Charles could have made an acquaintance and then friend of the doctor, and sooner or later the man's condition would have been revealed. He was hardly careful enough for it to be otherwise. Eilam was cold enough to others that he was close enough to reality, and Aldrich had much of the same history as Dr. Morgan – but he had not used any of them.

They were all real in a way. Lewis loved tea and drank it all of the time – almost to the point of prescribing it as a medicine to cure anything. He was rather cold, and preferred to wear waistcoats the year through. Hewlett had loved music – playing the harpischord until his fingers cramped and his wrists ached, only to hold them still and go out to stare at the dark heavens above him. He often thought that the Major's only other interest besides his music and stars was wine, although not nearly as in high regard. He still wondered how the gentleman had survived that war...

Charles was a quiet man, a doctor as well, although he had lost his license. He was kind and would die to protect those he cared for once he realised how much they meant to him. His successor Andrei was a scholar, putting years of travel and immersion in cultures to use, amassing an immense library almost worth of Alexandria. He loved his hounds and had bred many elegant Borzoi's under the watchful eye of the cats that found shelter within his house. Even Eilam with his cold reserve, and Aldrich in his vicious protectiveness may have met the younger on more even terms – begun an acquaintance in a better way.

But he had wanted an end – had wanted to be himself. He did not want to drink Lewis' tea and speak of a wife from London; he wanted to speak of a lovely dark-haired woman laughing at him as he was pulled to the ground by his sons. He did not want to play Hewlett's music selections, he wished to hear the lyre haltingly played to the teasing of his friends and the abrupt cessation of all continuance of songs. He did not wish to renew Charles' license or speak of the woman he had cared for until the end – although he was certain that Henry would have liked to hear of her – but he would rather have remembered the young boy that ran to him carrying a broken dog, asking him to fix it because they had stepped upon it while playing. He did not wish to remember Andrei's doctorate or cold mansion, or look again at Eilam's little playmate – he would rather remember the brothers that drug him along with them in their fun, reminding him that he could not eat the papyrus or scrolls.

He wished to eat his favourite food, read his favorite book, speak his favourite language, speak of old friends, struggle to remember that he had secrets to hide from new friends...He wished to be young again. Or at least not so old.

But he had forgotten it all. Did he like tea, or did Lewis? Was he the horseman, or was Hewlett? When stripped of a part and a name, he became nothing. He was a creature that would never end – merely breathing and existing until the world burnt down around it – until all tore itself apart and he was left behind, unable to follow. He was left with only grey anymore – the means and the ends blurring until he was cold and amoral to others. He forgot that others expected him to decide quickly – to live as though he would one day die.

Henry didn't understand. He was so young – so new. He still looked at the world through a scale of black and white – of good and evil. He clung to his name and his history as though it was all that let him exist – as though if he somehow lost it he would change irrevocably. Indeed, he would – but only because when he lost it they would be torn from him in a way that nothing could ever fix. Given time, he would realise that deadness inside of him as the death of Henry. He would forget Nora's smile and the sting of her betrayal. He would forget Abigail's laughter and the warmth of her love. He would forget life and death and everything would become one long endlesss path – nothing would truly matter in the end.

Henry looked at him in horror – promising himself and begging himself to never fall to such depths of darkness. He was so quick to assume him the villain that laughed manically in his lair, sewing together Frankenstein's monster – if he ever asked him if he had a part with that, he was experimenting upon a replication of fiction upon him – plotting the destruction of the world. He could not picture him as one with a child, a pet, a friend, a family.

He should have begun this meeting differently. Somehow, he had known this would end terribly – could only end terribly. He knew that Henry was too young to fully understand – to know what it was like to finally die only to have to live a thousand more lives until you lost who you were amidst the sea of souls you had picked up. Someday, he would know this life – and even while he tried to bring it to pass, he couldn't help but want to stay the inevitable.

Henry would never forgive him. Not for what he assumed him to be, not for what he had known was done to him, and not for what he would learn had happened in the past. In his world, he was good and the elder was evil, trying to destroy him. In a way, he was. But he was also trying to fix himself.

As if any amount of destruction would ever mend the shattered edges of himself.

* * *

 _Dies irae, dies illa solvet saeclum in favilla.  
Quantus tremor est futurus, quando judex est venturus,  
cuncta stricte discussurus!_

* * *

Translation: Day of wrath, day of anger will dissolve the world in ashes.  
Great trembling there will be when the Judge descends from heaven to examine all things closely.

 _AN: …...so I looked up the transcript for episode Eleven to learn more about Farber because the wiki is terrible at loading on my computer. What is mentioned in the transcript? An absolutely lovely song that has been ruined by_ Forever _called_ Dies Irae _(the actual Dies Irae sequence and not Lacrimosa or Rex Tremendae although that's quite lovely too...). So then I was listening to it because I love Mozart – and then had the idea to look up the lyrics. The excerpt is almost all of the lyrics – I exempted the "as foretold by David and the Sybil." part. This is a study of Adam because Lewis is so very different than the sociopathic Adam – as are all of the other faces I have drawn up (let alone Hewlett and Hermann...). To resolve this, I came up with this idea – that he was dropping away all masks. Also a musing on the question of whether or not he can even remember who he truly is anymore after nearly twenty-five hundred years... Hewlett is from the series_ Turn. _11-23-2015_


End file.
